


when you're looking at the sun I see the moon

by jayhood



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Break Up, It could go either way, M/M, Soulbonds, Therapy, There's not really an endgame here, pimms is not endgame, zimbits is not endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24351436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayhood/pseuds/jayhood
Summary: Kent Parsons struggles with his one-sided soulbond with Jack Zimmermann. Jack struggles with his non-existent bond with Eric Bittle.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	when you're looking at the sun I see the moon

1

Kent gets those dreams sometimes. Nightmares, really. Or memories. The time difference they are on right now, it’s hard to say. And does it count as a memory if it is happening in real-time?

Kent doesn’t know, he’s not up to date on the modern soulbond lingo. You would think he should be, given that he has one and all. But it’s not relevant to his day-to-day life. It was never going to be, he will find out later; it’s just nobody bothered to tell him that.

So, dreams. It’s nothing too awful. It’s a casual remark here and there. It’s people in the library who get quiet when Kent goes by, and follow them with their eyes. It’s a shot that wasn’t a goal. It’s the worried voice of Bob Zimmermann in his ear: is he sure he’s alright? Or, don’t worry, it’s a team sport. You can’t win them all, Jack.

It still makes him wanna puke when he wakes up in the middle of the night; or  _ run _ . That’s why he got himself a treadmill. Nobody runs outdoors in Vegas.

Sometimes it’s in the middle of the day. Kent picks up the phone and calls Zimms, on those days. He listens to the dial tone, and  _ hates, hates, hates Jack. Isn’t he supposed to be better? Wasn’t it the point of - the college? The break-up? God, what a moron, just wastes his time, wastes everyone’s time, everything about him is just a fucking waste. _

“You fucking prick,” Kent says to the voicemail. “I miss you.”

He doesn’t know if he gets his point across. He’s not good at words - or, at least, he’s not good at making people feel better with words.

It used to be easier when Jack could read him too. 

Yeah, Kent is lying to himself, because nothing about not knowing where Kent starts and Jack ends was easy. Except for no-look one-timer.

At least they got that right.

2 

He’s not good at words, right? But he can do things. He used to do things for Zimms all the time. Small things, big things. All pointless now, with how it all turned out.

Nah, truth is, he always was pretty much useless at anything except hockey; and Kent just can’t win the college game for him.

But it gives him an idea.

Sometimes, when Zimms doesn’t hate himself as much, he hates his teammates. As he should, probably. They’re not on his level. They’re not on Zimms’ level either. It sucks, playing with a team that sucks. 

So that’s what Kent can do: give him another team.

3

Ok, so Zimms didn’t want another team. Or, he didn’t want a team if it came with Kent on it.

Smart choice, really. That’s probably why Zimms shut him out, why he broke off the bond from his side. Otherwise, they would be stuck in the feedback loop of  _ anger  _ and god-knows-what Kent is feeling at the moment. Stupid, he thinks, he feels stupid.

He also feels crus _ hed _ , he feels  _ betra _ yed, he feels  _ doubt _ because  _ what if Kent is right and he’s not going to sign with Falconers, what if they don’t want a fuck-up like Jack, what if nobody wants a fuck-up like Jack, Bitty probably doesn’t want him, he pities him when he’s not afraid of him or irritated by him, and now Bitty heard how worthless Jack is, it won’t be even that _ . He feels guilt.

It was easy to forget how many of Jack’s thoughts lived in his head, before. It’s the first time Kent doesn’t want them there. Doesn’t want his own either. 

Kent drinks, plays flip-cup or something, takes selfies, drinks some more.

4

Kent fucked up. He knows that. He doesn’t remember that, as was his intention when getting black-out drunk at a college party before the game the next day.

Jack  _ does _ .

It’s enough for Kent to delete his number. Otherwise, he’s going to try to fix things again, and everyone knows how it will go.

It's going to be alright though. Jack will sign with - whoever he signs with. Gets his legs under him in the League. Won't be so defensive against every minuscule thing Kent says wrong. Same as in the Q: as soon as Jack got the C, he mellowed out some. And after they got the Cup, that's when they bonded. It's going to be the same here. Give it a few seasons.

1)

Jack doesn't know why it still happens. Why he still lets Kent get to him. After the rehab, he stopped hearing Kent's voice in his head. Stopped thinking about him entirely. 

Jack is glad he decided to come down tonight. He looks at Bitty more than he's looking at the camera, and he probably has to do something about it - it's the Epikegster, not much privacy here. 

He finds it hard to care. There's that warm pool of  _ anticipation _ at the bottom of his stomach, the one he knows isn't his. He thinks he knows what it is. He wonders if Bitty does. And what Bitty thinks about it. Does he want to kiss Jack right here and then? Is he not doing that because there are all those people around?

Then the party and all the people at it disappear: Kent Parson walks into the Haus. 

Kent Parson, no matter where he is, is larger than life. But there is no room for him in Jack's life, now. Jack carved him out. It wasn't easy, severing a soulbond when you can't tell anyone you have one. You have to do it yourself, through sheer willpower. You have to squash any emotion. You have to stay busy. You have to become that hockey robot he always teased you about being. And Jack knew, he knew he can't back down an inch, otherwise it comes back, like Kent did after winning his first Cup. And here he is, with Bitty. Opening up his armor just enough for a knife to pierce him in the back.

He runs upstairs. Kent follows.

It starts innocent enough. Jack's heart beating a bit too fast, them kissing. Jack can't even blame Kent for it: he closed himself off, he wrested the bond from his chest cavity. Everything he feels is his own brain mistaking fear for attraction.

He's glad when Kent starts talking. It's so much easier to tell him to get out when he wants to punch him in the face instead.

2) 

After Epikegster, things are weird with Bittle. That glimpse of him Jack got, it didn't happen since. Bitty must have not gotten it at all, which happens, sometimes. Just... not often. Soulmates usually in-sink with each other.

It's for the best, isn't it? It's safer that way. It won't end horribly because there's nothing to end.

It's on his mind during graduation, yet another chapter of his origin story. Prequel to his real life. Right?

"Jack," his father says. "You miss all the shots you don't take."

And just like that, Jack is running across the campus. Bitty is surprised to see him, even more surprised when Jack kisses him. But that's okay. It's safer that way.

3) 

Bitty, in many ways, is more courageous than Jack is. He wants Jack to visit him in the summer and meet his parents. Jack agrees; Bitty is not out to his parents but it will help, in the future, if they knew Jack already and liked him.

Bitty wants to kiss at the back of his truck on the 4th of July. Jack agrees; he hates this date, too much on his mind if he's alone, and it's better when he isn't alone.

Bitty wants to become boyfriends officially. Jack agrees; he doesn't need for Bitty to say it out loud. He just - asks him, and gifts him a little reminder that Jack is his. It's a silly material thing but it the best he can offer when they don't have the real thing yet.

Bitty wants to come out to their friends. Jack agrees; it's his friends too, and he's sure as anything that even if they react... not great, he has new teammates now. But it goes just fine.

But when it comes to a point where Jack can't figure out what Bitty wants.

Bitty asks him:

"Are your parents bonded?"

They upstairs in Bitty's room. Jack is curled around Bitty. He viscerally wants to wipe this desolate look from his face. He doesn't know how to do that though.

"My parents are, see," Bitty continues. "Have been since about a month after meeting each other. Married after two years though. There was no reason to be hasty. They knew they found it, the one."

Jack rubs his spine soothingly. He doesn't know what to do with his hands otherwise.

"My parents weren't," he says. "Took them about twenty years. Then my father retired and came home. They never got to spend much time together in one place before that. It takes time. And effort."

Like hockey.

"And it's a choice," he says. "Not a guarantee. Every day, you decide if it's worth working on."

Bitty turns around so they are facing each other. His eyes are glistening. He searches for something on Jack's face. And Jack squeezes his biceps.

"I'm choosing you, Bits."

Bitty smiles and they kiss. 

It leaves a bad taste in Jack's mouth. When Valentine's day comes around, he orders one hundred roses. Bitty likes them. Probably. 

Jack has no way to know for sure.

3.5) 

Bitty asks him once about it. Doesn't say it outright: were you ever bonded with someone? Jack wouldn't ask either if he was in Bitty's place. Jack is twenty-five at that point. Most of the bonds are formed in your late teens, early twenties. It's just easier to bond then, as Jack himself could attest.

Easy to break a bond too, so Jack doesn't get where the whole "the one" notion comes from. 

Anyway, the older you get, the fewer chances you have. Not none, Jack's parents are proof of that. But less.

No, Jack wouldn't ask about it if he was Bitty. Would be too scared of the answer.

So when Bitty asks about his history, Jack does a kind thing. He tells about Camilla and a few other girls. He tells about Kent, too.

"It always had an expiration date," he even tells the truth.

He expected Kent to leave him behind as soon as he found something better. And there was nothing better than winning in NHL.

"It was physical," he says. 

It was. Any Kent's mood swing messed with Jack's brain chemistry. Any Jack's anxiety attack took over Kent and made him lash out, turning fear and the feeling of inadequacy into anger.

"Hockey," he explains.

Playing together made them feel more intensively, but that's just how adrenaline works.

"He never got over it," Jack says. 

Jack didn't get why. Jack wasn't particularly interested though. It was enough that he had. It was the only way he could move on with his life. He was drowning in Kent; he was in a falling airplane, and he had to get his air mask on first.

1.5) 

"We owe each other apologies," Jack said.

A year or so later, being asked about Kent constantly, by teammates, or journalists, or his boyfriend, he would forget why he ever thought so.

4) 

Jack can't retire after his first Stanley Cup. He and Bitty are going to move in together after Bitty's graduation but it won't help. Jack can't give him the certainty, can't give him what Bitty's parents have: that feeling that you found the one. Not for the nearest future. Maybe not ever.

He can give him this, though: he kisses Bitty on Center Ice.

5) 

Jack misses the presser after the final game because about twenty minutes after the video of him kissing Bitty made its way on social media, he hears someone saying, " _ Parser, buddy, that's enough for you today. _ "

Jack is surrounded by his teammates, and friends, and parents, and Bitty, and he almost has a full-blown panic attack right here and now.

Bitty notices something is wrong and gets him out. Gets them home.

At some point in the evening, when Jack wanders out of their bedroom, he discovers all of the Falconers and SMH migrated here too.

They party.

Bitty has pies, and a lot of missed calls from his folks, and a slightly manic look in his eyes.

Jack does his best to keep him distracted, and it helps that it keeps him from playing those words in his head over and over again. " _ Parser, buddy _ ". 

6)

There is no Bitty (in his direct line of sight) on the presser. So he spends the most of it more on thinking about what the fuck it was, yesterday, and waiting for someone to bring up Kent, for some reason, instead of figuring out the best way to answer the actual questions he gets.

But he's allowed to be distracted under those circumstances, isn't he?

He desperately needs to talk to someone about this. He doesn't know who, though. He can't go to Shitty or Lardo, they would tell Bitty or say that he needs to tell Bitty. Nevermind that telling Bitty would be the cruelest thing to do here, not to mention unnecessary. He just needs to be thorough.

  
  
  


4.5) 

Somewhere between getting Bitty one-hundred roses and the playoffs (which Falcomers made and Aces didn't), Jack visits Kent. 

It's after a game. They are in Vegas. 

See, Jack figured it out, what went wrong in severing the bond. 

He shut Kent out. He stopped getting anything from Kent's side. But, thinking back to the last visit Kent made to Samwell or the one before that, is it true? Jack got riled up both times pretty quickly. More so than he ever was by a teammate or anyone.

That feeling, the anticipation he felt. He was pretty sure it wasn't his own, that it was Bitty's - he wanted it to be Bitty's. But maybe it was just Kent, getting close. Maybe he didn't get much of anything from Kent prior to that just because _ Kent didn't think about Jack all that much prior to that. _

Stands to reason if to form a bond you need reciprocity, to break one you would need it too.

That's a good discovery, Jack decides. He just needs to make Kent break it from his side.

So before a game he tells Kent that he's going to come over.

5

Haha, shit, oof, Kent doesn't know what he expected.

To get a chance to apologize? He had a year to think about things. He knows that what he said was shitty. He knows that Jack felt awful like he did that night before the draft. And Kent was the one who made him feel that way, now. Maybe Kent was the one who made him feel that way before.

"I'm sorry, Jack," he says. "For everything I... I would do anything to make it right."

"Anything?" Jack asks.

Kent takes Jack's hands in his. Looks into his eyes. 

"Yes," he says.

He feels  _ relief _ , too.  _ I can do it _ , he hears inside his head.

"Kent," Jack says softly. "There's only one thing I want from you. Stop."

6 

"What do you want to get out of it?" his new therapist asks.

Kent shrugs.

"My doctor recommended you," he says. "Says you can't brain surgery yourself out of a bond. Bet there's a drug for that."

"I am afraid there isn't," she says, not looking sorry at all.

Her face is open. She looks at you without judgment and without curiosity too. Detached. It might be better that way. He heard about transference when people get crushes on their therapists. He wonders if he's going to get one too. He hopes not.

"So how does it work, then?" Kent asks. "If it's not a scalpel and pills, how do I get rid of it?"

"It depends," she says slowly. "Sometimes distance and no contact over a prolonged period take care of it."

Kent lets out a little laugh.

"Wouldn't need you for that, then, would I?"

"Because you tried that already and it didn't help? Or because it's not an option?"

Kent gets what she's meaning, with the last one.

"I'm not abused," he scoffs. "If anything, I'm the abuser. But no, we don't live together or anything. We met five times over the last five years. We're not even in the same timezone."

She makes notes as he talks. When he notices that, she stops.

"You said you were being the abuser in these relationships. But you don't live together or see each other that much."

Kent lifts one shoulder.

"I guess I kept trying to, I don't know. Get back together. When the other party wasn't interested."

"Did they state it clearly and you went against their wishes? Or was it an impression you got?"

"Uh, the first one but, like, recently - that's why I came, I guess. I was asked to," he waves a hand, trying to encompass the word he tries to come up with. It doesn't come, so he uses Jack's instead. "To stop. Kinda the second, too, but I was too busy being a self-absorbed asshole to figure it out."

"Why do you call yourself abusive if the moment you were asked to stop, you started to look for ways to do that?"

"Shouldn't I, like, get a hint, a long ago? Instead I kept - I dunno. I was feeling pretty fucked up, and I thought it would feel better if we were together. And I kept trying and kept making it worse, for both of us. I made it worse. You know?"

She nods like she does, but there's no way she does. She looks too put-together to know how it is to be the reason someone wants to kill themselves.

7

Kent doesn't get a crush on his therapist. He gets to talk for an hour about how he's the worst person alive (she doesn't like it when he puts it in those words; last time, she made him recount ten people who are worse than him; the first five were alright, after that he started to get troubles).

When he runs out of things to talk about what he did to Jack, she ambushes him with the question. What did Kent get out of that relationship? He wanted to keep it going - why?

Kent thinks it obvious. Asks if she ever was bonded with someone. She says it doesn't matter, people in the same bond even can experience things differently. 

So Kent starts to explain and realizes that he can't, not really.

"It's just, " he says. "We went through some shit together. Some real shit. We were there for each other. Until we weren't, of course. I dropped the ball on that one."

She has problems with that too. First time in Kent's life he mans up and takes responsibility for the mess he made out of him and Jack, and she argues with him. Underage, parents, the doctor who prescribed pills, coaches - it doesn't matter, in the end. Jack lied to all of them, downplayed how bad he felt. But Kent, Jack couldn't lie to Kent at all. Except for how he promised they would go through the draft together and Kent believed him.

"But see," Kent says, "just shows that I had to know something was wrong. But I wanted to pretend everything was going to be alright. And I let myself believe it because it was nice and easy. Good dream."

8

It's like she knows she can't change his mind on the topic of responsibility. So she changes the whole conversation.

What made him bad for Jack?

Kent blinks when he hears that. Didn't they go through it already?

She clarifies, that Kent keeps telling that he was feeling too much, made his partner feel even worse. How? What did Kent feel, that first year? All the latter years?

9

They touch upon Kent's anger issues. He has to come up with recent examples, something unrelated to Jack at all.

He can't.

10

Oh, and all this time, she keeps giving him stupid assignments. Like, try one new thing every day for a week, report back. Meet someone new before the next session. Meditate. It's all pointless but meditation is worse by far. It's a month and he is getting nowhere with it.

She changes tracks again, and it's all worksheets and journaling and stuff.

11

He tells Scraps and Swoops about the therapy.

Not, like, sits them down and unloads on them or something. Just, they lost to Falconers, again (where's that Cup hangover for them, huh?), and he feels really, really... not great.

Scraps nudges him and tells that Kent is too full of himself if he's thinking they lost the game because of him. Yeah, he played like shit, but it's not like the rest of the team doesn't matter.

"Yeah," Kent mumbles. "That's what my therapist says, too."

There's a bit, and then Swoops hits him with a pillow. 

"See? I bet they have a Ph.D., so you better listen to them."

"Hey," Scraps says, "I don't have a PhD and I am saying the same thing. Why he can't listen to me?"

They start to bicker among themselves, and Kent breaths a little easier.

12

Next time they lose, it's in NY, and he takes Swoops and Scraps to his mom's apartment. She's surprised but glad to see him. He had missed her too but he's glad he has Swoops and Scraps as a buffer. This way, she won't ask him anything he isn't prepared to answer.

13

He invites her to come over for the winter holidays, but she can't take time off at work, especially if half of that time she's going to spend alone while he's away on a roadie.

That's okay. The first two weeks of July work for them both.

Later, over the phone, he asks if she maybe would consider moving to Las Vegas. She doesn't have to work, he says. He can buy her a nice house. Pay for everything.

"That's nice," she says. "But I can't, I told you, and I prefer if you don't bring up it again."

Or she plain doesn't want to, because honestly doesn't see anything wrong with his offer. No need to act insulted.

But when he tells his therapist about it, halfway through he realizes that it's the same thing he did with Jack: went to offer something that was very much unwanted, and felt offended when it was rejected.

His therapist isn't convinced. Is it, just like with Jack? 

"Yes," Kent says. "I was an awful kid. She always worked too hard, and I was always underfoot. She couldn't relax for a minute. That's why the hockey, to get me out of the apartment, out of her hair. To get her a breather. She even went to my father for alimony money. It must have killed her to do that. She hated that smug asshole. Always trying to hold money over her. Making her feel like shit that she didn't earn as much as him, was baggage on his neck when they lived together. She hates owning anyone anything."

A minute passes where Kent goes over his own words.

"Wait," Kent says. "Is that why..."

"Now, you're getting somewhere," his therapist says.

14

His mom actually wants him around, who would have thought.

They Skype more often, now. Confirm plans for the first two weeks of July. His mom also tells him, after a few months, that she met someone. She looks very nervous saying this.

Kent in turn tries to look very excited and enthusiastic. He is excited about his mom. Lately, he felt like shit after realizing that while he offered her to move to Vegas to be closer to him, not once he considered a trade. So hearing that she has someone in her life makes him feel a little better.

It's just sometimes if he isn't overplaying it, it seems like he doesn't get his point across. So he pesters her with all the regular questions.

"Who is he? Does he treat you right? Is it serious? Does he have kids from a previous marriage?"

"She does," his mom says. 

And braces herself.

Kent laughs but it's a nervous laugh. His mom notices it and looks down.

"Wow," Kent says. "Really? I mean, I never knew. Why didn't you tell me?"

That's a dumbass question. Take a fucking guess, Kent.

"No," Kent says quickly. "Sorry. I am glad you told me, is what I mean. And... me too."

It's his mom's turn to laugh incredulously.

What a pair of dumbasses they are.

15

He asks his mom if she doesn't mind him talking about it, with people he trusts. At the time, he meant his therapists. But then he is having lunch with Swoops and Scraps, and they are talking about Kent maybe requesting a trade. It still is something he thinks about.

Swoops looks bummed out. Scraps claps him on his back.

"If that's what will make you happy," he says.

"That's the thing! I don't think so. Getting traded is my worse nightmare. I don't like the changes. And you guys, how can I leave you guys?"

"Aww," Swoops croons, immediately more cheerful than before. "You love us."

And yeah, Kent does.

He didn't realize it before. But he does! It just doesn't hurt at all, loving them. And that's new.

"Well," Kent coughs. "Anyway. I guess she isn't so lonely after all. I am meeting her fiance and the whole family when playoffs are over. Earlier, if we don't make it - so I really, really hope we do. What if they don't like me?"

"If your new stepfather is an asshole," Scraps says. "Just remind him that you're a hockey player and you have two dozens NHL players on a speed dial that can and will fuck him up."

Kent waves it away.

"Nah, I'm sure my new step- _ mom  _ is a perfectly fine person. It's just she's a writer for kids' books, and all her children are into some kind of arts too. I'm the only jock of the family. Like, what can I even talk about with them?"

Swoops frowns for a second and opens his mouth to say something but Scraps beats him to it.

"Are you kidding? The costumes you make for Kit. If it's not art then what? You know I'm going to need your skills the next October when Marisol finally old enough to go trick-or-treating."

It's something Kent picked up not so long ago, as one of the assignments from his therapist. Learn something new, a skill that will make you feel good about using it. And it's fun, and the jump in followers on Kit's Instagram seems to reflect he's not so bad at it. It does make him feel good.

Swoops, after Scraps elbows him in the side, shoves him back and turns back to Kent.

"So, a child book author? Is she any good? I need recommendations for my nephew, he has a birthday soon."

To be honest, Kent doesn't know. He doesn't read.

Or didn't, before that, because he texts his mom and finds out the title of the series, and picks it up at a local book shop.

It's great, to be honest. For kids, sure, very optimistic, very friendship is magic, but at the same time... It's a story about a diverse team of superheroes. Most of them, incidentally, queer. It's books that he needed to read when he was a lot younger, though he didn't read then either. And even if he did, he wouldn't pick it up.

So he calls Swoops and tells him a little about the plot, saying that he liked it but was unsure if his nephew's parents would be okay with some character traits.

"It's cool," Swoops says. "My sister and her husband are very liberal. When I came out to the family, they threw me a party."

Kent takes a minute to process it.

"Should I have thrown my mom a party too?" he asks just to say something. "Or, is it another way around, if I came out to her right after?"

Swoops are silent for a while here too.

"I guess you should have just partied together," he says. "Kinda difficult to do that when you live in different parts of the country."

"Yeah," Kent says. He debates with himself. "But I and you live in the same city."

"That we do."

They don't go to a club or anything, though. Kent doesn't know about Jeff but he feels his thirties creeping up around the corner. So, instead Swoops gets them tickets to a college basketball game, and after that they have a beer in their usual sports bar.

It's a thing they start to do, now, just the two of them. Kent eventually tells Scraps too. And later, a few other teammates, and the management; he still is afraid of getting traded - or, with a no-trade clause in his contract, he's more afraid of them making him wish to be traded. Because he kinda thinks now that getting traded won't be the worst thing in his life. Retirement, though, is much bigger fear now. He brings it up in therapy and talks it out, what his plan for retirement is now. What it would look if the worse happens. What could he do if his life didn't have hockey instead.

A year ago, he would have said nothing. There's nothing that could replace hockey. It still is true. But sometimes you lose things you love. It's not pleasant, it's not fair, it's just happens. And you have to move on.

16

Still sucks but what can you do?

7)

Jack doesn't do half-measures. Bitty moving in with him after graduation is a given. Jack corals their team for the proposal and prepares a speech too. Everything has to be perfect.

He repeats the words under his breath looking at the mirror. It starts to seem stupid after the twentieth time. He thinks, idly, if Kent is getting it. Flashes of Jack saying his real life started when he met Bitty. He hopes not.

He hopes that that morning after he won the Stanley Cup and kissed Bitty for the whole world to see, and woke up with the worst hangover ever, it was Bitty's.

He hopes that random flashes of happiness are Bitty's too. He doesn't bring it up, waits for Bitty to come forward first.

When he proposes, at the rink, it is perfect. Bitty even faints. When he comes to, his eyes are full of joy.

And Jack? Feels nothing at all.

But the wedding, he reminds himself, the wedding will help.


End file.
